The Game of School is constantly being played across the United States. How many classrooms could you walk into and see a teacher presenting information and the students pretending to listen, secretly doodling in their notebooks. Some students follow along, but daze off because they do not understand or already know the information they are being given and have lost interest. I know this was the case with many of my high school classes. We would do the readings at home only to discuss an entirely different topic in class, it was as though the teacher felt it was their duty to assign us busy work to do just so he or she could say they gave homework. Eventually we would all learn the ways around the readings, for novels this meant reading "spark notes" each night in case a pop quiz ever came up. Due to this approach in high school, I feel as though I am at a setback here at college. Since I started college here at URI, I have had many nights when I simply sit in my room and try to read what I need to for my classes the next day. For me this never ends well because even since elementary school, I was playing the Game of School and only doing the bare minimum of work. Now I'm realizing what a big impact all those years of "games" has had on me because I don't have the learning capacity to sit at my desk and read for three hours straight without fidgeting, checking my phone, or getting up to do something else. I am hoping that with my time here at URI, I may be able to overcome my learning struggle onset by my educational past. It is not that I didn't do well in school, because I did, but it is the fact that I did what I needed to get by without actually retaining any of the information. I have found that in college, it is a much different case, the professors here really want to engage us, they don't want to trick us into thinking we've learned something we have not. Hopefully, the learning environment here, at URI, will help me to improve my learning abilities so I may achieve my highest potential. Like me, many other students, have probably hit a brick wall of work as they entered college, but we can change that for future generations. The Game of School is constantly affecting students across the country and that is something that should be addressed. Many administrators will say their school has improved over the years, but they are looking at the external picture, if the administrators tended to the students in their schools and watched how they were learning they may be able to help. The Game of School is something that has affected me and many others, but hopefully, in years to come we will see a cease to these "games."